zincsearch/zincsearch · error · errors.Error

invalid_argument

invalid_argument

Error message

user id is required

What it means

GetUser(id) is the lookup function for users by their id. It validates that the id parameter is non-empty and returns an invalid_argument error when it is an empty string, preventing pointless storage lookups. The caller (e.g. CreateUser checking for name collisions) passes a value that ended up empty.

Source

Thrown at pkg/auth/getuser.go:26

*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.
 */

package auth

import (
	"github.com/zincsearch/zincsearch/pkg/errors"
	"github.com/zincsearch/zincsearch/pkg/meta"
	"github.com/zincsearch/zincsearch/pkg/metadata"
)

func GetUser(id string) (*meta.User, bool, error) {
	if id == "" {
		return nil, false, errors.New(errors.ErrorTypeInvalidArgument, "user id is required")
	}
	user, err := metadata.User.Get(id)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, false, err
	}
	return user, true, nil
}

func SetUser(id string, user meta.User) error {
	return metadata.User.Set(id, user)
}

View on GitHub (pinned to dd2f8afd65)

Solutions

1. Ensure the user id is set and non-empty before calling GetUser or CreateUser
2. Validate request payloads server-side and reject user objects missing an id
3. When using CreateUser, pass a non-empty first argument (the id) since it is also used as the login name

Example fix

// before
user, exists, _ := zinc.GetUser(id)
// after
if id == "" {
    return errors.New("user id must be provided")
}
user, exists, _ := zinc.GetUser(id)

if id == "" {
    return fmt.Errorf("cannot look up user: id is empty")
}

func hasUserID(u map[string]any) bool {
    id, ok := u["_id"].(string)
    return ok && id != ""
}

user, exists, err := zinc.GetUser(id)
if err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "user id is required") {
        return fmt.Errorf("caller bug: empty user id passed")
    }
    return err
}
if !exists { /* handle not found */ }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling zinc.GetUser("") directly, or CreateUser with an empty `_id`/name so that the internal uniqueness check calls GetUser with an empty id.

Common situations: Unmarshaling a user JSON document that lacks the id field; binding an HTTP request body where the id field is absent; concatenating/looking up users by a variable that was never populated.

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• ZINC_FIRST_ADMIN_USER and ZINC_FIRST_ADMIN_PASSWORD must be
• invalid_argument
• index ${name} does not exists
• bulk index data format error
• index.name should be not empty

AI-assisted analysis of zincsearch/zincsearch@dd2f8afd65 (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8e08347616619129. Report an issue: GitHub.